05/08/2026
Surviving Norway's worst terror attack set Bjorn Ihler on a path of trying to understand - not hate...
Fifteen years ago, in 2011, Bjorn travelled to Utøya island off the coast of Norway's capital Oslo.
Bjorn was 20, a performing arts student, and he went to the island to take part in a youth camp for the Norwegian Labour Party.
While Bjorn was there, the camp was attacked by Anders Breivik, a far-right extremist with an anti-immigration manifesto.
Bjorn first knew about the attack when he heard popping sounds.
"As we were trying to figure out what was going on, we saw a man in dark clothes walk across the ridge. And some people ran towards him," Bjorn remembers. "He lifted a gun and shot them straight down."
Bjorn and his friends ran into the forest and lay flat on the ground. Bjorn found a child in a state of panic and hid with him for a while before joining another group running from the attacker.
"We got to a place on the track where Breivik had executed a group of people who had been hiding. And we couldn't run on the track because there was a pile of dead bodies there. And I kind of blacked out after that."
Bjorn's memories are patchy from then on, but he does remember finding another child, and running - only to see the attacker emerge from the edge of the woods.
He jumped into a lake with the two boys, looked back, and saw Breivik take aim at him.
"I've described it in the past as kind of feeling like my soul left my body. He took aim and fired and missed."
Seventy-seven people were killed that day – the majority on the island. Brevik had also left a bomb in the Norwegian capital, Oslo.
Bjorn and the boys survived, although their fathers were both killed.
Bjorn has spent the rest of his life dealing with what happened.
Only a week after the attack, he picked up Breivik's manifesto, and tried to understand.
"We had fairly similar lives in many ways. Like how does someone who's so similar to me... become so different from us? That was something that I wanted to understand as part of my healing process."
He's since devoted his life to learning what drives people to extremism and terrorism, and how to stop them.
He sees common patterns. A need to be valued. A hatred of diversity. And he says the way to respond to hate is to recognise the humanity of the other person.
Now, Bjorn says he cares for Breivik in the same way he would care for any other human.
Alongside his wife, he co-founded the Khalifa Ihler Institute, which promotes peace, human rights, and community.
The pair live in a forest by a lake, very much like the island – and yet he says it's there, in nature, that he feels safe.
🎧 Outlook: https://bbc.in/4wI1t15
